LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY OF
MONDAY,
MARCH 22, 1993
The House met at 8 p.m.
ORDERS OF
THE DAY (continued)
DEBATE ON
PROPOSED MOTIONS
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Laurendeau): Resuming debate on the proposed motion of the
honourable Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) that this House at this sitting
will resolve itself into a committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to
Her Majesty.
* * *
Hon. Donald Orchard
(Minister of Health): Mr. Acting Speaker, I
wonder if I might have leave of the House for a short statement.
The Acting Speaker (Mr.
Laurendeau): Does the honourable Minister of Health have
leave to make a short statement? [agreed]
Mr. Orchard: Mr. Acting Speaker, I thank my colleagues for
granting leave. This is the first
opportunity that I have had to make this statement to the House as the result
of newspaper coverage in the Winnipeg Free Press Saturday last. Given that I have had some opportunity to
have further discussions, I wish to table the following letter which will be
forwarded to the Winnipeg Free Press as a letter to the editor dated March 22,
1993.
Mr. Acting Speaker, I have an unqualified
apology to make to this Legislature and to the citizens of
What inspired my angry response was the
question concerning the location of my apartment, that is, the address, and
whether I shared that apartment with anyone.
The approach by the reporter led me to conclude the reporter believed
that I was somehow using public funds in contravention of statutory
provisions. Since this is not accurate,
my temper flared at the prospect of such an allegation, and I used
inappropriate language in my reply. For
that, again, I offer an unconditional apology.
Thank you, Sir.
* * *
Mrs. Sharon Carstairs
(Leader of the Second Opposition): Mr.
Acting Speaker, I rise to continue the debate on the motion on Supply in order
to go into Supply, as the motion reads.
I want to yet once again indicate very
clearly what the process is that we are engaged in. We are engaged in a motion which would create
Committee of Supply. At the time of the
motion, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) clearly wanted to use that motion
of Supply in order to go into individual Estimates, first of the Department of
Highways and the Department of Family Services, and then, if they quite frankly
passed the Highways Estimates, to also go into the Estimates of the Department
of Agriculture.
I indicated from the very beginning that I
see this as an infringement on my rights as a legislator in this Chamber in
that, to me, the presentation of three Estimates without the presentation of
the Main Estimates book leaves me at a serious disadvantage in doing my work
not only as the critic for the second opposition party in the Department of
Family Services, but also as the Leader of the second opposition party, in that
I cannot make value judgments about the process of this government's economic
agenda, because I do not have all of the details as to that economic agenda.
I have, over the last few days, indicated
clearly that I believe this to be a contravention of custom and precedent, both
in
Mr. Acting Speaker, we know that in the
past, so‑called filibusters, which is what others would say I am engaged
in, have in fact been very broad ranging.
They have talked about a great deal of things. I have found filibuster motions which have
had individuals standing up and reading from the Bible. I do not intend to do that. I intend to continue the debate on the issue
of the constitutional guarantees, through precedent, for Supply motions and how
those Supply motions should be presented in this Chamber.
I was speaking this afternoon about the
evolution of the Supply concept in the House of Commons. That is where I would like to begin again
this evening. Before I do that, I want
to make it perfectly clear yet once again that there are options.
The Liberal Party is quite prepared to go
into Interim Supply and to grant that Interim Supply before we adjourn for the
spring break. What we do not want to see
happen is that we have a motion that allows the government to go into Interim
Supply and then they use that Interim Supply permission to pivot into the
Estimates.
Since we have had no assurances from the
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), who is the House leader of the government,
that he will not do that, then we are not prepared to grant permission to go
into Interim Supply at this particular moment in time. We will do it as soon as we get that
guarantee from the Minister of Finance, because I do not want to keep anybody
from their family commitments or from their holiday commitments.
I am also determined that this is, for me
at least, a matter of principle. It is,
for me, a deviation from past parliamentary practice and one which I consider
to be highly dangerous. Therefore, I will continue until I feel that danger has
passed.
* (2005)
I was speaking about the defeat of the
Diefenbaker government when we adjourned on, interestingly enough, a Supply
motion. I would like to pick it up from
there.
As it was, the defeat on the 5th of
February removed the need to obtain yet another Interim Supply. The Diefenbaker government was able to carry
on through the election of the 8th of April of 1963, an election for which, I
might tell you, I was not in this country.
I was in the
The action of the 8th of April 1963, by
means of Governor General's warrants‑‑I am reading for the sake of
Hansard from a book called The Canadian House of Commons. The
There was only one precedent, the
Parliament elected on the 10th of June 1957 was dissolved on the 1st of
February 1958, before the 1957‑58 Estimates had been approved by the
House. After the 1963 election, the new government, headed by Mr. Pearson,
removed any uncertainty as to the legality of the expenditures that had been
made during 1962‑63 by means of a special retroactive appropriation act.
The vulnerability of the government to a
long delay in the granting of Interim Supply had been demonstrated. By holding up Interim Supply, by simply
refusing to let a vote be taken, an opposition group, not necessarily the
official opposition, could have precipitated an election. The tactic would have been effective whether
or not the government had a majority unless closure was used successfully.
A more blatant example of the weakness of
a government threatened with the stoppage of its Interim Supply business was
provided in October of 1963. As the
result of the bifurcation of the Social Credit Party and to the Ralliement des
creditistes with 13 members and the Social Credit Party with 10 members, a
controversy arose as to the right of the Ralliement des creditistes to be
seated as a separate group.
Incidentally, if they were recognized as a
separate group by the House, the payment that had been provided earlier that
year by statute for the leader of each group with 12 or more members, other
than the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition would go to Mr. Real
Caouette and not to Mr. Robert Thompson who had led the party before it split.
The question of whether or not the House
should take cognizance of the split which had occurred after the election so
that one or other of the two groups had not received electoral approval was
referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections. The committee made slow progress. When the Pearson government sought an Interim
Supply to carry it through October and November, Mr. Gilles Gregoire of the
Ralliement announced that the House and the government were to be held to
ransom. Unless the committee dealt urgently with the request of the Ralliement
des creditistes for recognition, the Supply request then before the Committee
of Supply would be delayed.
* (2010)
In October, Mr. Gregoire stated his
position candidly: Mr. Chairman, I must
inform you that we do not intend to end the debate on Interim Supply either
tonight, tomorrow or as long as Privileges and Elections committee has not
remedied the ridiculous and illogical situation which prevails in this corner
of the House.
It sounds a little familiar, because I
feel very much the same way in this particular Chamber at this particular
time. We are not prepared to do what the
government does until it ends what we think is an illogical and ridiculous
situation. On the 7th of October‑‑I
am now again quoting from the book‑‑the House arranged for the
standing committee to deal with the matter immediately, whereupon Mr. Gregoire
permitted the Committee of Supply to come to a decision on the request. In exactly the same way, I am prepared to
allow this House to come to a decision on Interim Supply if, in fact, we get an
answer to our earlier problem.
It was the session of 1964‑65 that
convinced most members that time limits would have to be placed on the
Committee of Supply, as we have in this Chamber, at 240 hours. That session‑‑I am quoting again‑‑showed
that otherwise Supply business was liable to be distorted grotesquely by
political considerations, that annual sessions of reasonable length were likely
to be rare. The final Supplementary
Estimates for 1963‑64 took over 13.5 days in the committee. One set of Supplementary Estimates for 1964‑65
dealt with in July of '64 took one and a half days. Although work on the Main Estimates for 1964‑65
began fairly early, it was not finished until 27 November and required 31 days.
In the meantime, the Pearson government
requested Interim Supply on five occasions.
The first request took one day, the second took two hours, the third
took five and a half days, the fourth took nine and a half days, and the fifth
took eight and a half days, for a total of 25 days. The normal Supply business of the session,
including the final Supplementary Estimates for 1964‑65 and the first
Interim Supply for 1965‑66 both dealt with quickly in April 1965 had
taken 77 sittings.
Although there was no summer adjournment
in 1964, the session continued until the 2nd of April 1965, for a record of 248
sittings with the flag debate and Supply as the items that consumed the most
time.
Fresh from the experience of the summer
and fall of 1964, the special committee on procedure and organization on 14
December 1964‑‑the same day on which the government used closure to
terminate the flag debate‑‑recommended in its 15th report that in
the future the Main Estimates should be referred for study to the standing
committees and that the Committee of Supply should be limited to 20 days on the
Main Estimates in one session.
Yet once again, Mr. Acting Speaker, we
have reference to the
Mr. Acting Speaker, let me quote again
from The Canadian House of Commons:
Presumably the special committee thought this would enable the House to
pass the Main Appropriation Bill early in each fiscal year, thus reducing the
government's dependence on Interim Supplies.
In its 19th report made on 26 March 1965,
after debate in the House had revealed how strongly the Diefenbaker group were
opposed to time limits, the committee retreated from the bold stand taken in
December. In that report it recommended
a far longer period of time, basically 30 days, but possibly up to 45 days for
the work of the Committee of Supply.
* (2015)
The Diefenbaker group objected to this
limit also. Remember they are in
opposition, Mr. Acting Speaker.
Quote: On the 8th of June 1965 in
the next session, after another angry debate, the House responded to the
experience of the previous year by ordering that the number of Supply motion
debates was to be reduced from six to four, the detailed examination of the
Estimates was to be assigned to the standing committees and that not more than
30 days of the time of the House, including the time of the Committee of
Supply, was to be allotted to the business of Supply in each session. This time limit applied to the Main
Estimates, Interim Supply requests and all Supplementary Estimates introduced
before the committee had completed its consideration of the Main Estimates.
An Honourable Member: There is that word again.
Mrs. Carstairs: It keeps coming over and over.
Quoting again, Mr. Acting Speaker,
excluded from the limit were all Supplementary Estimates introduced after the
Main Estimates had been passed and of course the final Supplementary
Estimates. With this major renovation
the House began a movement that was to terminate with the abolition of the
Committee of Supply on the 20th of December 1968.
Before the House adjourned in the summer
of 1965 it granted two additional Interim Supplies for 1965‑66. One had been granted on 2nd of April, just
before the end of the session. On the
8th of September during the adjournment, Parliament was dissolved.
The new House elected on 8 November 1965,
again a Liberal minority, met on the 18th of January 1966. Since the Main Estimates for 1965‑66
had not been dealt with, the government had used Governor General's warrants
after the Interim Supplies had been expended.
The House on the 21st of January 1966 ordered that all the
In any event, a total of 26 days, two days
for a Supply motion debate and about 24 days in the Committee of Supply, were
used to clear away that unfinished business.
The Main Appropriation Bill for 1965‑66 passed the House on 9
March 1966, only 22 days before the end of the fiscal year.
With the Supply business for 1965‑66
out of the way the House was in a position to ascertain how satisfactory the 30‑day
limit introduced on 8 June 1965 would be when applied to the Supply business of
a single fiscal year, i.e., 1966‑67.
Because Supplementary Estimates introduced after the Main Appropriation
Bill had been passed were outside the time limit, the government found it
advantages to move slowly on the Main Estimates. By the end of October 1966, the four Supply
motion debates had been held, but only 14 days had been taken in the Committee
of Supply. At that point the contentious
topic on the horizon at the time was the unification of the armed forces. The official opposition decided to precipitate
an election by delaying the Interim Supply needed for November.
We have not suggested that we would like
to, Mr. Acting Speaker, bring down the House, as has been done. We are far more reasonable.
The request was considered by the committee
on the 31st of October until 15 November and could have been held up for six
more days, i.e., until the 30‑day period had been used. The prevalent assumption was that at some
point, about the middle of November, the Crown would be unable to meet its
payrolls for the first half of the month.
This intense crisis ended abruptly on the 14th of November, when the
Minister of Finance spoiled the game plan by revealing that money had been
found to meet the government's immediate requirement.
When the new special committee on
procedure established on the 25th of January 1967 began its work, it found that
the idea of time limits in the Committee of Supply was quite acceptable in most
quarters of the House.
Consequently, the committee focused its
attention on ways to use the time limits to assure that the Supply business was
done both efficiently and early in the fiscal year. Instead of making it advantageous for the
government to delay the Main Supply business, the rules, the committee thought,
should provide incentives to the government to return to the old practice of
getting on with the Main Supply business in the spring.
With this in mind, the committee
recommended that the 30‑day limit should not apply to Interim Supply
requests introduced after the 19th day of the session. Rather, the first request made after the 19th
day was to be limited to three days, and there was to be no limit on the time
that the Committee of Supply could take on any later request.
* (2020)
On the 26th of April 1967, this recommendation
was adopted by the House. The defect in
this approach under which the Supply timetable was tied to the first day of
sitting in the session rather than to the calendar was demonstrated in the next
session. That session began late on the
8th of May 1967 and the Main Appropriation Bill for 1967‑68 did not pass
the House until the 2nd of November 1967, but that was only the 71st day of the
session. As a consequence, the special
committee began to think in terms of the Supply timetable with fixed calendar
dates selected to assure that normally the government would have the session
started early, thus making it possible for the House to conclude the Main
Supply business before the summer.
Well, that is what we have been calling
for. That is why we have been asking for
procedural rules in the House, so that we can go in in the fall session; we can
come into the spring session; we can immediately be presented with a budget; we
can receive our Main Estimates; we can begin debating the Estimates process.
Unfortunately that is not the way this
government wants to do it. They want to
come in the fall; they want to have a Speech from the Throne; they want to put
legislation on the Order Paper, which is, quite frankly, noncontroversial in
nature. The one piece of controversial
legislation that was put on the Order Paper in the fall session was the Sunday
shopping legislation. We passed that into committee, hoping that committee
would be called while we were out of session, and the committee has never been
called.
So the whole idea of using this timetable
to speed up the session in this House has been irrelevant. It has not worked. If we had come back on
March 1, if we had been immediately presented with the budget within the next
few days and had immediately been able to receive our Main Estimates book, had
spent eight days debating the budget and then gone into individual Estimates,
then the world would have unfolded as we thought it was supposed to have
unfolded.
Now, we recognize that the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Manness) had some difficulty in preparing his budget, and so we
granted because the decisions had been made in
Mr. Acting Speaker, I am not prepared to
see the change in what has been, I would suggest to you, a Supply process which
I have traced back to 1689 and the Bill of Rights, that we are now looking at a
process which, for some reason or other, he wants to change. I consider that to be an extraordinarily
dangerous precedent, and that is why I am using the time of this House, and I
recognize that it is not the focus of much of the attention of the members of
this Chamber, but that is the only option I am given as an opposition member in
order to make the government see reason, and see it from our perspective as
opposition members who want to carry out our duties to the very best of our
ability.
So let me continue, Mr. Acting Speaker,
again reading from the book The Canadian House of Commons: The time limits on the Committee of Supply
introduced on 8 June 1965, as modified on the 26th of April 1967, did not apply
to the final Supplementary Estimates.
The danger of leaving even this phase of the Supply process undiked was
demonstrated in the winter of 1968. On
February 19, 1968, a motion for the third reading of a tax bill was defeated in
the House just a few weeks before the Liberal Party was to hold its leadership
convention to select Mr. Pearson's successor.
In the turmoil that followed, the final Supplementary Estimates for 1967‑68
were under consideration by the Committee of Supply for 14 days.
I digress from the text for just a moment,
because that was a very interesting thing.
In fact, there was a defeat in the Chamber. Mr. Pearson was away on holidays. Mr. Stanfield had just recently become, the
year previously, the leader of the official opposition. There are many who thought he should have
gone for the jugular at that particular point in time and forced the government
with Mr. Pearson still the leader, of yet he had resigned, to the polls.
Mr. Stanfield, whom I know well because he
was a Nova Scotia Premier, and one who succeeded Mr. Hicks, who had in turn
succeeded my father in 1956, and whose children I grew up with and whose older
daughter I taught to swim, was far too nice a gentleman to do this. Perhaps he should not have been quite as nice
a gentleman. There are many who thought
that he was far too nice, quite frankly, for the rigors of politics. I was one of those. I have always been an admirer of Robert
Stanfield. I particularly liked his
gardens, I must admit. They were
absolutely beautiful, and they were just around the corner from where I lived.
* (2025)
He did not bring down the government,
although he did have that opportunity.
Because the tax bill was defeated and because the tax bill was a money
bill and because precedence was that a money bill could lead to the defeat of
the government, many would argue that he had the opportunity at that moment to
push for a nonconfidence vote. It
probably would have voted exactly as they had voted on the tax bill, and the
situation would have been that the government was defeated.
Interesting that we might be in a similar
circumstance right now because as we see more and more members of the federal
Conservatives resigning, there is going to be a tendency for them not to appear
in the House of Commons quite so often.
The Tories are engaged in, they tell us, a leadership debate, although
there does not seem to be much of a contest going on out there right now, but
there may be some interesting moments over the next few weeks and months. It is interesting to see some division in
this House with respect to the candidates they are supporting.
I am delighted to see that the member for
Lac du Bonnet (Mr. Praznik) has got on the bandwagon of Mr. Charest, whom I
must say to him I have had tremendous admiration for since the Charest report
in 1990. I think Jean Charest tried very
hard to put together a constitutional agreement, and it was the only time in
that whole process between 1987 and 1990 when opposition parties across the
country were indeed consulted. So I am
sure that Mr. Charest may not believe that I would wish him well, but I indeed
do wish him well, and I would like the member for Lac du Bonnet to convey it
and to convey why I wish him well, because I think it was a difficult moment
for him. I think there are many who thought
he bloodied his copybook to some degree because he went out so far on a limb as
he had done in that particular Charest report, and I think that he has been one
of the unsung heroes for a long time.
Now that does not mean that I am going to vote for Mr. Charest. I have a certain friend, Jean Chretien, whom
I will be supporting, but I do have a great deal of admiration for Mr. Charest,
and I hope that the member for Lac du Bonnet will extend that to him.
Let me continue on The Canadian House of
Commons and Supply. By 1968, as a result of the almost constant troubled Supply
business and of the experiments made to overcome that trouble, most members
were ready to accept a radically new approach recommended by the special
committee on procedure, 1967‑68, in the winter of 1968.
The committee's recommendation was that
the Committee of Supply be abolished and that the work of examining the
Estimates should be given over entirely to the standing committee, that a
specified number of days in the House should be put at the disposal of the
opposition, and that the House should decide on or before stated calendar dates
selected to conform to the needs of the fiscal year whether or not to grant the
Supplies requested by the Crown. This
approach opened up the possibility that the Estimates would be examined
thoroughly, that the opposition would wage war against the government by debate
rather than attrition and that a return could be made to orderly annual
sessions.
* (2030)
On 20 December 1968, the House adopted the
new Supply procedure recommended in outline by the special committee on
procedure in 1967‑68 and in detail by its successor, the special
committee on procedure, 1968. The rules
now provide, as we saw in Chapter V, that the most essential annual business of
the government, its Supply business, is to occupy the House during three
limited periods, one ending on 10 December, a second on 26 March, and the third
on 30 June, totalling 25 days and that the Appropriation Bill, based on the
Main Estimates, is to be dealt with before the end of the third period; i.e.,
before the beginning of July.
This means that the House will be in
session during the fall, and that as far as Supply business is concerned, the
House can adjourn late in June, early in July.
This arrangement, of course, does not guarantee either that the sessions
will not be unduly long because of other reasons or that all the business
regarded as essential by the government will have been completed in time for
the House to adjourn at the end of June.
The exploitation of the government's
highly vulnerable position in Supply business was a major part of the
opposition's parliamentary strategy in any crisis throughout the period from
1955 to 1968, but other weaknesses in the rules were used also. Fairly similar
to the use of excessive time for Supply business was the use of excessive time
for the consideration of the resolutions then required before the introduction
of bills authorizing or entailing expenditures.
On 9 October 1964, by agreement among the parties, the House limited the
time that might be taken on each such resolution to one sitting or to a total
of five hours if the consideration had been adjourned. On 20 December 1968, as we saw in Chapter V,
the standing orders were changed so that such resolutions were no longer
required.
That, Mr. Acting Speaker, is how the
orderly process of the development of Supply procedures has been conducted in
the House of Commons, but we have had our own traditions here in this
House. The traditions have changed
somewhat in the time leading up to 1983 and the time after 1983. Prior to 1983, it was well within the purview
of government to introduce the
After 1983, it became commonplace in this
Chamber to introduce the budget, and at the same time, to present to members in
this Chamber the Main Estimates book, but we are not looking in this instance
to either the pre‑1983 procedure or the post‑1983 procedure. We are looking at a brand new procedure.
We are looking at a procedure that takes
place nowhere else. We are looking at a procedure whereby the government can
cherry‑pick. They can decide which
Estimates they will introduce and which Estimates they will not introduce. Then they would ask members of the opposition
to debate Estimates in isolation, that we will make decisions on three
Estimates without knowing what the overall expenditure plan of the government
is with respect to other Estimates, so that when we see a change in Family
Services, we cannot say that is fair and reasonable, as the Minister of Finance
(Mr. Manness) tells us it is. He says it
is fair. It is across all of the departments,
that they are all going to be held accountable, that they are all going to see
cuts, but we do not know that.
We have no idea whether the Premier's
staff is going to be cut in the same say that other departments have been
cut. We do not know whether grants to
Education have been cut the same way as grants to Family Services. We do not know whether grants out of Culture,
Heritage, a favourite I know of the member for Rossmere (Mr. Neufeld), the
grants to the multicultural industries, whether they are going to be cut in the
same way as the grants to the Family Services department. We do not know that because we do not have
the Main Estimates book, and that is the reason for this debate.
Mr. Acting Speaker, I want to talk now
briefly from another book called the Structure of Canadian Government, J.R.
Mallory, and he talks about Committees of the Whole. He says, while the role of Committees of the
Whole has been greatly attentuated by the sweeping procedural reforms
introduced in 1965 and 1968, the reforms that I just earlier made reference to,
before discussing these changes, it is necessary to understand the historic
role of committees in order to grasp some important functions of the House of
Commons or, I would suggest, also the Legislative Assembly.
Quoting again: The Committee of the Whole takes three forms,
the Committee of Supply, the Committee of Ways and Means and Committee of the
Whole. Each came into being by a
minister moving that the House resolve itself into the committee, which is the
exact motion that we are debating at this particular point in time.
Once the motion was carried, the Speaker
left the Chair and the Chairman of Committees presided from the Chair at the
head of the Clerk's table. In Committee
of the Whole, the proceedings were relatively informal, so that, for example, a
member could speak any number of times.
We know, for example, when we go into that committee, that the gentlemen
in the Chamber are allowed to take off their jackets, a rule, by the way, which
I also think should apply to very hot days but have never been successfully
able to change. It is more
informal. We sit, particularly in the
other room when we meet as Committee of Supply, rather than stand, although
that is becoming more common here in this Chamber as well.
I have to suggest to you that one of the
reasons I wanted that particular change, where people could sit down, was not
because I wanted to sit down particularly, but I remember Larry Desjardins was
the Minister of Health. He kept getting
up, answering questions and sitting down, and up and then down, and he kept
getting more and more red‑faced, and I actually went out and took a CPR
course because I was very concerned that Larry Desjardins was going to have a
heart attack in the House.
I thought, well, the least I could do
would to be go out and take a CPR course so that if it was necessary, we could
revive him, at least try, on the other side of the Chamber. I did not know that I was going to be asked
to use it last year in the middle of an election campaign when the member for
Crescentwood (Ms. Gray) and I were at Holy Rosary church, and the man who read
the epistle collapsed and had a heart attack, and I think the member for
Crescentwood was not exactly sure what had happened to me when I rushed to the
front of the church and began to apply CPR on his chest, unfortunately, in that
case, unsuccessfully, although we were sufficiently successful in getting him
revived so he was able to say good‑bye to his wife. That in itself made the courses in CPR which
I had taken well worthwhile, and I would recommend them to other members of the
Chamber.
But I digress, Mr. Acting Speaker, and I
know nobody would want me to do that, so let me return to the Committee of
Supply.
The Committee of Supply: It was principally thought that the Committee
of Supply, that the House of Commons exercised control over the annual
expenditures of the government. The
payment of money for the public service each year is authorized in an
appropriation act. Since this is a money
bill, its introduction required that the House first debate the financial
resolutions, i.e., the Estimates‑‑note it does not say the
Estimates‑‑which received the bill in Committee of the Whole.
The business of the Committee of Supply
was to give an opportunity for every member of the House to act on that ancient
maxim of parliamentary law, grievance before Supply. The form of discussion facilitated this
operation. The minister whose Estimates
were being considered was present on the floor of the House with a group of the
senior officials seated at a small table in front of him. They could not speak or answer questions
themselves but were there merely to prompt the minister from their expert
knowledge. Sometimes we have noted that
some of them require more prompting than others but, certainly, that is the
purpose of all that staff in front of the minister.
I quote again: . . . but were there merely to prompt the
minister from their expert knowledge and from the material that they had with
them dealing with points raised by members.
The usual procedure was for the minister to make a short statement on
departmental policy‑‑sometimes not very short, I digress a little‑‑when
the first item of his Estimates was called.
This was followed by short speeches from
the opposition parties.
Mr. Paul Edwards (St.
James): Mostly not short.
Mrs. Carstairs: Also often not short, the member for St.
James says, and then individual members would ask questions about particular
matters. Finally, the minister would
make a concluding statement answering points raised in the debate.
The discussion ranged over the general
implications of departmental policy as well as matters of detail, so it gave
the House an opportunity to discuss any matter for which the minister was
responsible. These opportunities for
general debate were not an unmixed blessing either to government or opposition.
Before 1955, there had to be a separate
motion in the House to get the Estimates of each department before the
Committee of Supply so that there had to be more than 20 such motions in each
session, each of which was debatable and subject to the moving of one amendment
and one subamendment. Oh, my goodness,
this means that we can not only amend the motion that I am now speaking to, Mr.
Acting Speaker, but one of my colleagues can introduce a subamendment if they
so choose. We can go forever unless we
can get some agreement from the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), the House
leader of the government, to get on with this process.
* (2040)
These opportunities for general debate
were not an unmixed blessing, either to government or opposition. Before 1955, there had to be, as I said, a
separate motion, and each one could be debated at that time. There could be an amendment, I remind the
members, an amendment to the motion that I am presently speaking to, and, in
addition, a subamendment which would allow every member of this Chamber to
speak to both the amendment and to the subamendment. [interjection] Well, I
think they should. I agree with the
member for St. James (Mr. Edwards). I
think that, obviously, there may be more debate on this particular issue than
we have, at this point, even considered.
The result was grave delay in getting the Estimates through the House.
Mr. Acting Speaker, it may appear to a
public unfamiliar with rules and traditions of the House of Commons that the
often tedious debates and wrangles in the House are worse than a waste of time.
Well, I see the Acting Speaker nodding in
some agreement and I can certainly concur with his nod. I think that some of the debates have been
quite tedious, including the one I am presently engaged in, but sometimes one
engages in tedious debates for a matter of principle, and that is what is being
engaged in at this particular point in time.
To quote again: The often tedious
debates and wrangles in the House are worse than a waste of time. They are a fractious attempt to obstruct the
legally elected government from carrying out the people's will.
That is sometimes the opinion. But let me read to the Minister of Rural
Development (Mr. Derkach) who is looking so attentive at the moment.
This is not the case, says J.R. Mallory in
The Structure of Canadian Government. He
goes on to say: The business of the
opposition is to oppose, and it has both a right and a duty to use its
legitimate rights in debate to put its own side of the question. [interjection]
I am certainly doing that, and I thank the honourable Minister for Rural
Development for recognizing that.
(Mr. Gerry McAlpine, Acting Speaker, in
the Chair)
If questions are not fully canvassed in
Parliament, then the electorate will not have a chance to judge between the
parties at the next election. A
government, in return for the privilege of governing‑‑now I would
ask both those ministers to listen very carefully to what I am saying‑‑must
submit to the necessity of arguing its case step by step through the House of
Commons. The step right now seems to be
a little high, a little difficult to overcome, but needless to say, Mr. Acting
Speaker, we are doing it step by step.
Let me go on to quote from The House of
Commons, The Structure of Canadian Government:
The opposition has a right to oppose, but it should not normally carry
opposition to the point of obstruction.
It must, in deciding to obstruct the completion of business, calculate
whether the issue is important enough to justify the action.
That, Mr. Acting Speaker, is the crux of
the matter. Let me read that again,
because I think it is so important. The
opposition has a right to oppose, but it should not normally carry opposition
to the point of obstruction. It must, in
deciding to obstruct the completion of business, calculate whether the issue is
important enough to justify its action.
In my opinion, I have made the decision as
a member of this Chamber that the action that I am taking is justified, because
I think what we are doing is extremely important and extremely dangerous. The public will become impatient with
needless obstruction which I agree with, while a government unable to carry its
business through the House can resort to dissolution of Parliament and appeal
over the heads of the opposition to the people in a general election. Now that is an interesting concept. Perhaps we can persuade the government that
it would like to go to the polls.
Then it becomes, the book states,
important that the issue which brought on the election should be a good
one. For example, the opposition did not
press obstruction against the Defence Production Act in the summer of 1955 to the
bitter end, but accepted modifications in the most criticized part of the bill,
which is exactly what happened last year in the bill introducing the Child
Advocate.
Everyone of us in the House wanted a Child
Advocate, but I think it is also clear that the Liberals and the New Democratic
Party wanted an independent Child Advocate, not one reporting to the Department
of Family Services. We could not get the
government to recognize that, but we finally got an amendment to the bill,
which at least required it to have a review in three years, not nearly good
enough. I am delighted that the member,
I think it was for
But quoting again from The Structure of
Canadian Government: They contented themselves with obtaining limited time,
obtaining limited but important concessions which, of course, is what we did,
because it became clear that the issue raised, why did arbitrary powers
conferred on the minister, was not understood by the public, so that there
would not be good fighting ground if an election were forced.
That, of course, is the issue that always
has to be decided by an opposition party, whether an issue is sufficiently important
to pursue it. I have, quite frankly,
decided that this issue, in and of itself, is sufficiently worthy of perusal.
Let me read now, Mr. Acting Speaker, from
Ronald Butt, The Power of Parliament.
What I am doing is trying to make the government realize that I have not
selected books that, quite frankly, just agreed with my position. I asked my assistant to go and bring me all
of the books she could from the Legislative Library on the structure and the
evolution of the House of Commons, particularly as it related to Supply. I did not ask her to find books that agreed
with me. I asked her to find books which
were dealing with the concept and powers of the parliamentary system,
particularly with references to Supply.
As I read them all, and I did indeed read
them all, not in their entirety but with reference to Supply, I found that they
did not disagree with me. In fact, they
all agreed with me. I would be delighted
if other members of this Chamber would participate in this debate and would begin
to find references that perhaps do not agree with me, but I can honestly say I
do not think there are any.
I think that all the references out there
dealing with the power of Parliament and the institution of Supply and the
Committee of Supply are all identical because some of these authors certainly
have been associated with the Conservative Party, and some of them have been
associated with the Liberal Party. I did
not find any that had been associated with the New Democratic Party. I guess it is too short‑lived for them
to have written their books yet.
The essence is that it does not matter
what political party, they are in agreement with what I have to say. So let me read from Ronald Butt, The Power of
Parliament, with respect to Supply: The
nonemployment of Supply procedure by the House to scrutinize the Estimates is
to some extent compensated for by the work of the Estimates Committee.
The first Estimates Committee was set up
in 1912, and in two world wars, it was replaced by a select committee on
national expenditure. Before the last
war, the Estimates Committee was not a success.
It seemed to concentrate in duplicating work already done by the
Treasury, and it was limited in its approach by the need not to intervene in
policy matters. Since the war, the
Estimates Committee has proven much more effective. It operates through six or more subcommittees
and has managed to get down to basic issues of policy administration and value
for money. The committee, consisting of
43 members, is empowered to examine such of the Estimates as seen fit to do it
and to report on economies consistent with policy implied in the Estimates.
Now, is that not interesting, because it
would appear yet once again that it is essential to present a Main Estimates
book so that you could follow through each government department's Estimates,
the theory of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness), the theory that he was
illustrating today in which he said fairness would carry through all of the
Estimates. Of course, in this book yet
once again, he makes reference to the fact, you need to see them all in order
to make that kind of evaluation.
In practice, however, the committee is not
so much examining Estimates that seem fit for examination as investigating
those for which it has time. The
limitations of so small a committee are obvious. Moreover, it has no organization to help it
comparable to the substantial staff of the Exchequer and Audit Department whose
work is reported by the controller and Auditor General which makes the Public
Accounts committee so effective.
* (2050)
Indeed, it is difficult to see how the
Estimates Committee could be provided with such a body as the Exchequer and
Audit Department which, for the purposes of auditing government accounts, has
representatives in all
In 1964 the Public Accounts committee
discovered a big underestimate in the development cost of the
"Bloodhound" missile with a substantial profit for Ferranti Limited,
the company developing the guidance system for this missile. The subsequent investigation discovered that
the company had made excessive profits of 5.7 million pounds, and it was
subsequently arranged that the company should repay 4.5 million pounds to the
government over a five‑year period.
This was a case which arguably might have been discovered by the
Estimates Committee before the event instead of being left to the Public
Accounts committee afterwards, provided the Estimates Committee was
strengthened.
The Estimates Committee is further limited
in its time by the fact that the Estimates which are produced in February‑‑we
are talking here about the British Parliament, as opposed to March for the
House of Commons in Canada‑‑must be passed through Parliament by
August, and of course in
As we have seen, it was suggested by the
select committee on procedure in 1964‑65 that the Estimates Committee
would have its terms of reference widened so that it would take on this wider
duty. Yet, it is arguable that the
essential problem is to make the Estimates Committee better able to do the
financial and economizing job over public expenditure, which by common
agreement the House cannot be expected to do through the Supply procedure.
Sanctioning, appropriating and vetting the
government's expenditure is one side of the Common's financial duty. The other is consenting to taxation proposed
by the government. We, of course, do not
know what is going to come down in terms of the taxation, because we do not
have the budget. We would have preferred
obviously to have had the budget at the same time that we got the Main
Estimates book, but we recognize that in the past that the Estimates book has
been tabled in this House without the presentation of a budget, and therefore
we did not hold out for that. We simply
held out for the right of the government to present us with the Estimates
process in their Main Estimates form before it digressed and allowed us to only
obtain individual Estimates.
Let me read now from The Canadian
Political System: Environment, Structure and Process. This is written by Richard J. Van Loon and
Michael S. Whittington and is a relatively new book and looks at Estimates and
a detailed scrutiny of Estimates in a slightly different manner. Let me quote from that: A detailed scrutiny of Estimates is the
business of Supply. Before the
procedural changes of 1969 abolished the Committee of Supply, it was that
committee's responsibility to go over the department Estimates in detail.
Now the Estimates for a particular
department go instead to the appropriate standing committee for detailed
consideration. Thus, for instance, the Estimates of the Department of National
Health and Welfare are reviewed by the Committee of Health, Welfare and Social
Affairs. Department of National Defence
Estimates are reviewed by the Committee of External Affairs and National
Defence, and so forth. This has meant a
large saving of time for the House of Commons, but it has increased
commensurately the amount of time each member must spend in committee. Currently by far the largest part of the time
spent in committees is devoted to the consideration of the departmental
Estimates.
That is certainly what a great many of us
do from now until the end of June, and certainly there is no question that the
members of the third party, the Liberal Party, spend more time in committee
than do other members simply because there are limited numbers of us and
therefore we do not usually have just one department to critique. We often have two, three, or four departments
to critique, and so we spend a great deal of time critiquing those Estimates,
and that is all the more reason why we need to receive our material promptly
and in an appropriate fashion, so that we can, in fact, do our job as we have
been asked to do it.
If you are, for example, the member for
Crescentwood (Ms. Gray) you have to look at the Department of Urban Affairs;
you have to look after the Department of Education, K‑12; you have to
look after Status of Women; you have to look after the Civil Service
Commission. If you are the member for
St. Boniface (Mr. Gaudry), you have to look after Rural Development; you have
to look after the Seniors; you have to look after Agriculture. If you are the member for St. James (Mr.
Edwards), you have to do Justice; you are doing Highways; you are doing Native
Affairs; you are doing a number of other issues that have to be dealt with in
this Chamber.
If we are to do our job effectively, then
it is important for us to have that background material, and we have not been
given that background material, nor do we have any assurance from the
government that we are going to receive that background material before they
would suggest to us that we have to go into those committees.
(Mr. Marcel Laurendeau, Acting Speaker,
in the Chair)
Let me quote again: The ability of a standing committee to
effectively criticize the spending plans of a given department is limited once
again by the lack of independent expertise in the committee. The witnesses called to back up the Estimates
of the department are themselves departmental officials. Furthermore, by the time the Estimates reach
Parliament, they have already run the gauntlet of criticism from the cabinet
committees, Ministries of State, Treasury Board, Treasury Board Secretariat and
the departmental financial experts themselves.
Is that not fascinating? You know, we are right back to the quote that
I was giving you this afternoon by Norman Ward in the book Dawson's The
Government of Canada, where again he states very clearly that it is not an
individual department that goes through Treasury Board and then through
cabinet, it is the whole Main Estimates book, that they are all done together.
I can only conclude one of two
things. I made this argument this
afternoon, and I think it is important to make it again. We know there are two things that have
happened. Either all of the Estimates
have been approved, at which point there is absolutely no excuse for us not
having the Main Estimates book. If all
of the Estimates have gone through Treasury Board, then there is no reason why
all of those Estimates cannot be published in a little book and distributed to
the 57 members of this Chamber.
On the other hand, if not all of the
Estimates have been approved, then we have government ministers on the Treasury
benches, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay) and the Minister of Family
Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) who have allowed themselves to be snookered. They have allowed themselves to have their
Estimates approved without seeing the others in their final state, so that when
they should be sitting around the bargaining table at the Treasury Board in a
cabinet saying, now just a minute, you have not cut in Education, and yet you
have asked me to cut in Family Services.
You have not cut, Mr. Premier, in Executive Council, but you have asked
me to cut in Agriculture. You have not cut the honourable Minister of Rural
Development (Mr. Derkach) and yet you have asked me to cut in Highways.
* (2100)
Well, if they have allowed that to go on,
I would suggest they have been snookered but good, because their whole purpose
in Treasury Board and then in cabinet is to defend their own ministries. Yet they have apparently lost that final
opportunity because other departments, if you were to accept that rationality,
have not yet been approved. Well, I do
not think that is what has happened. I
think all of the Main Estimates are ready.
I think that if they are all ready, then we should in fact have them.
Let me quote again: The ability of a standing committee to
effectively criticize the spending plans of a given department is limited once
again by the lack of independent expertise in the committees. The witnesses called to back up the Estimates
by the department are themselves department officials. Furthermore, by the time Estimates reach
Parliament, they have already run the gauntlet of criticism from the cabinet,
cabinet committees, Ministries of State, Treasury Board, Treasury Board
Secretariat and the departmental financial experts themselves.
It is unlikely that the standing committee
will be able to improve substantially or reduce the Estimates. Of course, the fact that the minister of each
department must publicly justify estimated expenditures in committee probably
prevents carelessness in the preparation of the Estimates in the first place.
Finally, it must be mentioned that the
opposition parties can to some extent use the consideration of the Estimates in
committee as an additional forum for criticism of the government's programs and
policy priorities. In a sense the
committee stage of the Estimates is at least as important for the general audit
function of Parliament as it is for the approving of the Detailed Estimates.
Mr. Acting Speaker, we have before us some
information from some departments, but we do not have that information from all
government departments. I want to
briefly discuss with this Chamber why it is necessary for us to have all of
that information.
When I compare, for example, the
Department of Highways and Transportation with the Department of Agriculture
with the Department of Family Services, I see some factors which are quite
different. I look for example at the
Department of Agriculture and at the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay) and,
according to the schedule which he has provided to us, he has cut the
Administration and Finance line of his budget by 10.7 percent, a rather
significant and major cut. When I look
at the Department of Highways and Transportation, I see that the Administration
and Finance line of that budget has been cut by 6.3 percent.
When I look at the Department of Family
Services, however, I see that in that department it has only been cut by 4.9
percent and, since that is the very department where I see cuts to program,
grants to MAPO, grants to the Indian and Metis Friendship Centre, grants to
students and funding of those students on social allowance, I say to myself,
well, how can the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay) cut his Administration
and Finance budget by 10.7 percent? How
can the Minister of Highways cut his Administration and Finance budget by 6.3
percent, but the Minister of Family Services can only cut his Administration
and Finance by 4.9 percent? The question
that immediately comes to mind is, what about all the others? Have they cut 4.9? Have they cut 10.7? Have they cut .6 or .3?
Is there logic over these
departments? Is there a rationale over
these departments? Is there a plan? Has there been a decision made by the
Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) that everybody's administrative budget had to
be cut by 6 percent and some of them made it as the Ministers of Agriculture
and Highways? Yes, Highways
Administration and Finance line by 6.3 percent, but not in the Department of
Family Services. Why is it that the
Department of Family Services requires this additional Administration and
Finance dollars? I do not know, and I
cannot make rational judgments about whether his is in line with the others
until I see the others, and I am not being allowed to see the others because of
the way in which this government has chosen to introduce the Estimates process
this time.
Indeed, when I look at Child and Family
Services and I see that particular line of the Family Services budget cut by
4.7 percent, I ask the question why? Why
4.7 percent? That is about what he was
able to cut his Administration and Finance.
Why are children expected to take the same kind of cutback? Surely, if the Minister of Family Services
(Mr. Gilleshammer) was concerned about quality of service in the field, he
would have been looking for more rigorous cuts to Administration and Finance,
the same kinds of rigorous cuts which it appears were made in the line on
Administration and Finance by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Findlay).
When I look at other lines in the same
budget, I see that in terms of the Minister of Family Services, that he has one
section that is huge. The Income
Security and Regional Operations which is, in fact, social assistance and
welfare went up by 9.3 percent‑‑9.3 percent‑‑and yet we
know that they told kids they could not go to school anymore.
You wonder at the logic of a government
that is prepared to pay them social assistance to stay home but is not prepared
to ensure that the funding is in place so that they can go to school. I have to think that their going to school at
15, 16, 17 and 18 years of age, in some cases a little older, is more critical
in terms of getting down our long‑term costs than their staying home and
twiddling their thumbs. Any yet,
according to this minister, it is better for them to stay home and twiddle
their thumbs.
I do not understand that, but again, when
I look at his overall budgetary figure, and I look at the final figure for
cuts, I find the Department of Highways, although its capital budget went up by
5.3 percent, mainly due to the funding from the federal government, that their
overall total appropriation for Highways and Transportation is down by 1.8
percent.
I look at the Agriculture budget, and I
see that their overall expenditures in terms of that particular department are
down by 14.1 percent, and when I look at Family Services, I see they have gone
up by 4.5 percent, but I know that all of that money in that 4.5 percent has
gone into one line of the budget, Income Security and Regional Operations‑‑welfare,
social assistance‑‑not to helping Canadians help themselves,
Manitobans help themselves, but to keep on in perpetuity the welfare cycle.
That is the tragedy.
That is the decision this government made,
and we know, we keep hearing from the Minister of Finance (Mr. Manness) and
from the First Minister (Mr. Filmon) that this is a tough budget, that the
government is under incredible pressure, that they have a credit watch today,
that there have to be ways to bring down expenditures.
But our question is not that they are not
trying to bring down expenditures, it is, what is their rationale for bringing
down those expenditures? What is their
raison d'etre?
I said this afternoon, and I will go over
it again, there were $3 million cut from grant levels. Some of those cuts, quite frankly, I think
make sense. They are reasonable and
logical. I mean it is, for me, pretty
hard to justify in tough economic times that the Manitoba Drama Educators'
Association gets a grant. I find that
hard to justify. I do not fault the
government for cutting that. I do not
fault the government for cutting a grant to the Manitoba Teachers'
Society. They have got money to fund
their own operations. There is no need
for the government to do that.
* (2110)
I can even see a cut to the National
Public Health Inspectors Conference. It
does not bother me. I mean, they may do
very good work, but I think we are going to have to look at all the conferences
and all the entertainment budgets and question whether any of those need to be
spent. I have asked my Whip, for
example, in his dialogue with the Whip for the governing party to ask the
importance of particular conferences, as to whether or not those travel
expenses are justified and necessary. I
think there are some conferences which are indeed necessary. When the Ministers of Family Services from
across the country meet, particularly when the federal government has done
specific cuts and it is needed to have a national strategy, that conference is
a legitimate visit, a necessary meeting, and that meeting should take
place. But I want to know if all of the
meetings that ministers are attending are, quite frankly, legitimate.
I do not have any difficulty with cuts to
organizations that, it appears to me, have large quantities of funding that
they can access, but that is not what we see in this list from a great many of
them listed here. I have been to five or
six of the Indian and Metis friendship centres in this province, including Flin
Flon, including Thompson, including
There is no fairness when it is decided
that the Manitoba Anti‑Poverty Organization should lose its funding in
its entirety from this government. Not
that it has been taken from $63,000 to $60,000 or to $55,000 or to $50,000, but
it gets nothing. It is as if the
government says, and in fact did say it in essence, they do not provide a
valuable service.
Well, by whose definition of
valuable? Do they honestly believe that
the telephone line at MAPO, which people use on a daily basis to find jobs, is
not a valuable service? Is the Minister
of Family Services (Mr. Gilleshammer) going to open a phone line in his office so
all these poor and unemployed can come into his office and make phone
calls? Because that is one of the
services that was provided by MAPO.
Is he going to have newspapers there so
that the unemployed can look up the want‑ad columns, so that they can
search to see if there is a job that they are qualified for, that they could
apply for? Is he going to provide that
service? I mean, is this what they want
provided? That is what MAPO does.
Is he going to provide some counselling on
nutrition for those on social assistance?
Is he going to encourage them to shop effectively, because that is what
MAPO does. It helps them with those
kinds of decisions. Is he going to
provide advice and support when these people have to go on welfare for the
first time and they are horrified at the prospect, they feel degraded, they
feel unimportant, they feel as if they have lost everything of value to live
for? Is the Minister of Family Services
going to open a counselling office in his office in this building and begin to
provide that kind of support?
I think not, and I know of no other
organization in this town that is going to do that.
Yet, by cutting the grant to this
particular organization, that is what they have cut, and they would argue in
the House, as they did in Question Period today, that it is fair, that it is
across the board.
Well, show us. Show us it is across the board. Show us that all the departments have been
treated the same way. Show us what your
rationale was. Show us through the
presentation of the Main Estimates what you believe to be the critical issues
of service, because what I see in this document, and I think it is important to
read it, because the Minister of Finance says:
Despite increasing financial pressure, the Manitoba government will
continue to provide funding, though at mostly reduced levels, to the majority
of grant recipients in the 1993‑94 fiscal year.
So before I can make real judgments about this, I have to know what the funding levels are to others. What have you done to other organizations? What has happened to Community Places grants, for example? Did they disappear? Have they been wiped out?